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Sourdough Colomba Pasquale - Italian Easter Bread

April 18, 2011 - 12:18pm

txfarmer

Sourdough Colomba Pasquale - Italian Easter Bread

My Christmas sourdough Panettone (blogged here) baking tired me so much that I thought I wouldn't be brave enough to deal with another sweet starter holiday bread for at least a year. Well, apparently 4 months are enough for me to forget the pain. Made two SD Colomba Pasquale over the weekend, both went to Italian friends who marveled over how authentic it looked and tasted.

There are many recipes, I mostly based mine on this one (thank you Google Translate!) It was very detailed, even had shaping diagrams, however, I did have two challenges:

1, I am not sure what kind of starter he used in the dough. I converted my 100% starter into Italian sweet starter and fed it every 4 hours 4 times (kept at 85F) before mixing the first dough. At which point I realized that the 50% sweet starter may be drier than what's used in the formula (doesn't sound like he used Italian sweet starter). In the end I adjusted the water amount to get a very liquid silk dough similiar to the SD panettone and pandoro dough I made before. I also noticed that the butter ratio in the formula is on the lower side, so I increasted just a little bit to about 35%.

2, The dove case I got (from here) had a recipe attached online, which says to use 250g of flour (about 680g of dough) per case. I had a feeling it was too much, after shaping, the case was already a bit less than 1/2 filled. I know from experience that a well kneaded broiche dough like this is capable of expanding to 4, even 5 times of original size. I put some extra dough in mini panettone paper moulds, only filling 1/4 full. After 2 hours of proofing, the dove case is already full, while the mini panettone ones took 3 hours to get to near the edge. In the end I baked the doves an hour before panettones, which means they are a tad underproofed, had "too much" ovenspring, looks like the birds are trying to soar away from the case! Even the mini panettone ones had great ovensping, ended up with a significant dome top. Both are very light, but the doves are just a bit less airy comparing to the mini panettones, which are lighter than air! Next time I will put only 500g of dough in the dove case, which will probably take 3 hours to get to the top and have an even airier texture.

2. Slowly add sugar, knead until the dough is smooth and leaves the side of the bowl

3. Add butter bit by bit, knead until the dough is very smooth and elastic, passing windowpane test with a strong and thin window

4. Add in candied orange peel (soaked in rum and hot water overnight, drain before using), mix at low speed until combined.

5. Bulk rise at 75F for an hour

6. Divide and shape as shown here. I put about 680g of dough in each dove case, too much, 500g would be better. The case should only be 1/4 to 1/3 filled. Used 80g of dough for my mini panettone moulds.

7. Proof at 85F for about 3 hours. The original formula says 4, but my Italian sweet starter is faster. In reality, the dough for the dove cases only got 2 hours of proof before it completely filled the case and had no where to go, the dough for panettone cases got the full 3 hours, by which time, it filled the case 90%+.

9. Baked at 360F until golden and done, 50min for the 680g doves, 20min for the 80g mini panettones, estimating 40min for 500g dough.

The bird grew and grew in the oven, almost fell over the edge of the mould. They wanted to fly away! :P

The mini panettone was not so mini, can't believe 80g of dough filled up the whole mould and created such a dome. I think these are properly sized, which leads to proper proofing time and oven spring.

The panettones were incredibly shreddy and light, lighter than air. One recipient of the dove cut it while I was there, while the crumb was also very light and shreddy(my Italian friend and her family said it was perfect), I felt it could be improved slightly if properly portioned, probably only because I just had the mini panetonnes to compare right beforehand.The taste is lighter than the panettone I made during Christmas since there are less add-ins, but the candied orange peel, icing, and almonds on top were perfect together. I think its flavor is in between of panettone (lots of add-ins) and pandoro (no add-ins). The proofing time was much shorter than the SD pandoro and panettone I made before, probably because there's way less sugar in the dough, and a tad less butter. With all the icing and candied peel, I don't miss the sugar though.

Hmmm, so Papum's starter is even stiffer than mine huh? In that case, my dough is quite a bit wetter than his. Well, with different hydration, different butter ratio, different kneading, I am guessing my version is quite a departure from his original version already. Oh well, as long as it's tasty right? :P

that is kind of the one that I used this year. I wish I would have taken pictures like I wanted to. They were very nice, though not perfect because I could not hang them upside down like they needed to be. They were light as air coming out the oven.

Really a great job and this comment comes from an italian loving both panettone both colomba....probably I don't eat a colomba since 2003. The main difficult is if you do not get the classic mould, I know the page where you obtained the recipe...I can confirm is a recipe you can trust of. Happy baking from Quito. Paolo

I struggled making panettone at Christmas as I didn't have the time to get a really strong stiff starter going & couldn't get the house warm enough for proving.

This Easter I've managed to kill a stiff (50%) starter I spent two days building, not once, but twice!

After the panettone experience I learned that the light in my top oven provided the right temperature. Unfortunately I decided to make pizza in the bottom oven while the last build of the starter was still in the top oven. I was feeling really pleased with myself that I'd used the discards from my stiff starter feeds to make the pizza. Oh the irony.

The second time I carefully removed the last build from the top oven before baking bread & then checked the temp before replacing it - obviously not carefully enough. Whilst I didn't completely kill it this time, enough of the yeast was killed that it's taken 16hrs to double instead of 4! Sadly, I don't have time to bring it back to strength before Easter.

I think I better build myself a proofing cabinet!

Your post has inspired me to give it one more ago, albeit after Easter.

my proof box consists of a large bin with a couple inches of water, a submersible aquarium heater, and and aquarium pump to move the water. That is topped with a smaller bin that leaves about a 1 inch gap between the sides of the larger big and the small one. I then top that with the lid of the large bin, I find this gives me wonderful humidity as well as heat.

Ha, you are totally right. It's a lovely 90F here right now, typical of "spring weather". ;) However, my house is usually AC controlled at around 78F, stilly shy of what a sweet starter needs, hence the proofing box. Geraint would definitely need one as well then!

I have been practicing croissants, so when I hear about your weather, I want to move to Wales with my butter and rolling pin!

Passion, effort: A....can't evaluate the taste...but something tells me both doves ended very quickly..so: another A. :-) you encouraged me (and perhaps not just me) to make a dove or, why not a panettone...(easier to get a mould). Happy Baking and happy easter. Paolo

It looks great. You are correct about the molds from fantes. I ordered from them this year and I had to make sure which size they were. They are 17oz. or 500 gram molds. That recipe online doesn't rise as high as the traditional. I used 300 grams to make the wings, and 200 grams to make the body, and they came out great. If you want some bigger molds, there are some at goldaskitchen. Last time I bought from them they were 750 gram molds.

just out of curiosity, what kind of mixer do you use? I used to use kitchenaid, blew out the motor making panettone once, then stripped the gears using it only to grind meat, and make pasta. Was wondering what other kind of mixer can handle the abuse of kneading high gluten flour. I now use Electrolux and love it.

I attempted this on a lark. I had recently grown a good amount of liquid sourdough at warm temperatures. I had extra and it did not taste sour, so thought I would try this one.

Mine differed from this formula/procedure in a few ways. I used 300g of liquid starter and adjusted the formula accordingly. Decreased the hydration slightly when making the 2nd dough, not sure how much but just slightly; working the dough, it felt around the 80% range. After mixing the 2nd dough, it was directly refrigerated for about 4 hours before being divided/shaped. I did not add the candied peel, but flavored the dough with lemon zest, vanilla and orange oil. I did not use a form, but shaped the doves as you illustrated last year, and reproduced by freerk several days ago.

The dough was remarkable! I was impressed by the expansion of the 1st dough. It grew over 4x in 10 hours! After shaping, I allowed the 2nd dough to prove at warm temperature for a couple of hours, when it had already more than 2x'ed; and then grew more than 2x again when baked!

My surprise was how much more expansion the dough had after the initial 1st dough rise, particularly since less than 25% more flour was added to the mix. What's going on??! Are the yeast fermenting the sugar while ignoring the flour? I had never made anything like this, what are the limits?

Made 2 doves and one large doughnut, each slightly less than 1lb dough

The shaped dough for the doves were less than 3/4" high at the high point, but the finished bread is almost 4" high

The 10" diameter doughnut was made from a rope less than an 1" thick, but grew to more than 3 1/2" thick

The finished bread is ethereal. I look forward to trying something similar again. Thank you for your effort.

I love the recipe and am eager to give it a try, but after I ordered/received the mini panettone molds, I think I got a different size. I have a hard time believing that the ones I have will accommodate 80g of dough. Can you tell me the dimensions (height/diameter) of the mini molds you used for this bake? Thanks. You are an inspiration.

Makes sense. I ended up buying ones that are only 2.25 X 2 which works out to be only about 1/2 the capacity of yours. I'll shoot for 40g per mold vs. 80 (either that or i'll use my muffin tins with parchment collars). Hopefully the dimensions will work out such that I get the nice dome you achieved. Thanks for the info.

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